Oh Death
by Laufeya
Summary: Find what you love and let it kill you. Let it drain you of your all. Let it cling onto your back and weigh you down into eventual nothingness. Let it kill you and let it devour your remains, for all things will kill you, both quickly and slowly, but it's much better to be killed by a lover. -Charles Bukowski Genderbent John Watson, but generally the same feely relationship.
1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One:**

* * *

><p><span><em><strong>AN:<strong>_ Ok so before you read this, just a heads up: the reunion is very different. Most notably Joan's reaction to it is very different to that of her male equivalent. I like to think that she would have processed it in a more rational way, being a woman (no I am not being sexist, please don't take that the wrong way). Not to say that Joan is not any less of a violent and emotional character as that of John, but, let's be honest here, she doesn't have a Mary equivalent to hold her up, and she would have suffered a lot more. Suffering changes people and their habits. I ask you only to take this into account as you read my very changed chapter. More to come on the reunion in the next instalment. Thanks for reading!

* * *

><p>Joan Watson was in hell. Or, rather, it felt like hell, though it strongly resembled the bleak wasteland of the Afghanistan Desert. The Denizens of this pit strongly resembled her army comrades, though, at the same time, they did not. She couldn't remember Alex having a gaping hole in the middle of his head where his face used to be. She couldn't remember Peter having no arm where one should be hanging. She heard their voices though, clear as the day those words had been spoken, just before all the world had been shattered by a spray of bullets and screams.<p>

"Get down Jo!" Alex had called. She vaguely wondered how he managed to do that though, as his holey face had no mouth. Suddenly there was a bang, a shatteringly loud one at that, and a great spurt of blood. She felt it hot and sticky on her face. She could taste it in her mouth. She turned toward where the sound had come from and she saw Alice. Alice was her friend. Alice had been with her from the very beginning. Alice had two children. She had three dogs. She had a cat. She also had a hole in her chest the size of Joan's fist. That was when the world had exploded. A fiery stab of pain fanned out across her shoulder, bringing her to her knees in a scream of agony. There was so much pain. Then darkness. Nothing but empty blackness, a place devoid of feeling. Whether it was preferable to the fire in her shoulder, Joan could not say. There was something inherently terrifying about nothingness.

Joan heard screaming. Laughter. Something was moving in the dark. She screamed, but there was no sound. It was engulfed in the darkness that descended upon her with such a weight that air was forced from her lungs. She tried to move but there was too much weight upon her. She couldn't breathe. Their faces swam before her eyes. Their empty staring eyes. The comrades who had fallen. They were dead. It was her fault. Why was she not dead?

"Sherlock!" Her own voice echoed in her ears. A vision swam before her eyes. It was Bart's. No. No. No. Not this. Not again.

"Sherlock!" Again her voice. Screaming. Desperate. She struggled harder against her invisible bonds. She had to get up there and stop him. She couldn't let him fall. Not again. She couldn't move. Panic built up in her chest and gurgled up her throat. She felt sick. She couldn't speak. She couldn't breathe. She screamed, but still no sound. No sound in the world as she watched him fall. Down… down… down… There was so much blood. Blood… Sherlock's blood. His life bleeding out of him and onto the pavement below. Too late.

Too Late.

Joan was jerked out of her sleep by the sound of a slamming door. She was tangled in her sheets and drenched in sweat, her dirty blonde hair plastered to her cheeks and forehead. She coughed as she drew air into her dry throat, looking around desperately into the darkness of the room around her.

It was just a dream.

She forced herself to breathe deeply and evenly. She couldn't afford to panic. She must not show weakness. Not with him downstairs. She couldn't handle that right now.

She pushed her tangled sheets aside and stood up. Her muscles ached with stiffness, and she winced as she stretched them, working the blood back through them. She used a towel to dap at the sweat on her face. She was going to need a shower.

Joan pulled a sweater on over her head and attempted to run a brush through her tangled hair, though ultimately failed, gave up with a sigh, and opened her bedroom door and descended the short flight of stairs. Sherlock was already up.

He sat at the kitchen table with his head buried in a microscope. He was wearing pyjamas and a dressing gown. It was all he ever seemed to wear these days. He didn't leave the house much.

Joan said nothing to him as she walked past the table and over to the kettle. Disregarding the mess of beakers and tubes in the sink, she filled the kettle up with fresh water and put it on to boil. Sherlock said nothing. She said nothing. It had become their routine, to dance about each other like one was a bomb waiting to explode. She supposed, in a way, that she was. But that was no excuse. She had every right to be he had, after all, been dead for the last two years. She had every right to be angry, didn't she? Of course she bloody well did. But so far, she hadn't been. That had surprised her, and him. No doubt he had been expecting violence. Perhaps a couple of punches, a bit of screaming and the breaking of things. She hadn't given him that satisfaction. He could suffer through her tense silence like she had suffered from his absence for two years.

When he had walked through the door a week ago, she had done nothing. He had stood there, tall and exactly as she had remember him, minus a curious but slight stoop in his posture that he no doubt thought she would miss. He had rattled off explanations at her. "_I did it to protect you… I had no other alternative… Moriarty's web was too complex…"_ Less than curiously enough, he had not apologised. She seemed to recall that at some point that he had said that he ought to, but he hadn't. She wondered if this heartless Holmes had ever said a genuine apology in his life.

She had been sitting down, silent, unmoving and unblinking before him as he was speaking. Eventually she had stood up. He had trailed off as she had done so, no doubt expecting some sort of assault to follow. She had been angry. So angry. But so numb. Her anger had gathered itself into a small compact little ball and had jumped into a river, and was now fast sinking to the bottom. What remained was numbness. Just nothing. Nothing at all. Numbness was worse than anger.

"Joan…" he had said, stepping forward so that he stood over her. "Joan?" She couldn't look at him. She felt like she was going to be sick.

Joan from two years ago would have jumped on him at that moment, tackled him to the ground and would have either beaten him or hugged him. But present Joan, Joan who had spent the last two years thinking that her best friend was dead, and that it was her fault, and who had lapsed back into the depression she had wallowed in before she met him, regained her psychosomatic limp and disinterest in life Joan, had done nothing.

She walked around him, up the stairs and to her bedroom, locked the door and had preceded to spend the rest of the night lying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. He had knocked and called to her, bargaining with her in an attempt to gain entry. He could have broken the door down easily. Even thin and hobbling, the thin sheet of wood was no match for this madman's determination. But he didn't. She briefly wondered why, but found herself unable to adequately process the thoughts. She was drowning in a cesspit of accumulated emptiness. At one point she thought that his voice had broken a little, and she could have sworn that she heard him slide down the door to sit behind it. Eventually he had left, leaving her to lie there in silence. She hadn't slept. She had merely lain there staring at the ceiling, her mind floundering. She didn't care how he had done it. She didn't care about the bloody mechanics of it. She cared why. Why? Two years. Two _fucking_ years.

The next day she had gone down stairs for tea and had found him lying on the couch, deeply asleep. She had been as quiet as humanly possible, desperately wanting to avoid the confrontation that she knew was inevitable. It was too early in the morning. He had woken up anyway. Blessedly he had just sat there in silence. He had looked at her, with a sad glint in his eyes, but he had said nothing. That was a week ago. They had barely said three words to each other since. Partly because Joan had no idea what she wanted to say to him, mostly because she knew that once she started talking the anger would return, the sadness, the desperation, the agony, and all at once it would overwhelm her and she would do something that she would regret. She could not lose him again, although a part of her told her that no matter what she did to him, he would probably stay. Unless she killed him.

She suspected he was waiting for her to make the first move. No doubt he was anticipating some sort of emotional explosion. That made her angry. This calm and obedient silence was so contradictory to his nature that she wanted to scream at him. But that would only lead to the inevitable confrontation she was actively avoiding.

He coughed, and Joan was brought back to the present. She jumped a little as she realised that he was standing beside her, looking down at the screaming kettle. Funny, that she had heard the smallest noise that he had made, and not the much louder noise of the complaining kitchen appliance. That made her angry. Most things made her angry. Fuck.

"I could… do that" he said, awkwardly. That took her by surprise.

"You make shit tea, Sherlock" the abruptness of her reply made him frown a little.

"That was one time, and it was coffee, and the drugged sugar was what made it distasteful, not the manner in which I prepared it" she stifled a sigh and pulled a mug out of the cupboard above the stove.

"I wasn't referring to the time that you drugged me" This was the first conversation they had had in two years, and it was about tea. Fitting, perhaps. Nothing about their relationship made any sense anymore.

Sherlock stood there, awkwardly, doing nothing and possessing a mildly pained expression. It was the 'Joan I'm confused what did I do wrong why are you angry what are you feeling Joan" expression that she had come to know so damned well. It took a concerted amount of effort to ignore him and continue making the tea. She wondered what he thought he would gain by doing this task for her. Most likely it was a gesture of goodwill or friendship. A peace offering perhaps. Where once that would have made her smile and appreciate him, now it only pissed her off. Why? Fuck only knew.

Sherlock was still standing there awkwardly, brow furrowed and mouth slightly ajar, when she had finished a few seconds later. She watched the tea leaves dissolve into the hot water, their misty brown colour leeching into the water and turning it a pleasant black. She normally took milk. Not today.

She turned away from Sherlock and went to sit by the table, a notion which she quickly abandoned after seeing what lay atop it. She sighed internally and sat on the couch facing away from the kitchen. She would have gone to her room, but something about that seemed so very horribly cruel. She would prove the same message in a much nicer way by sitting away from him.

To her surprise, and slight dismay, Sherlock suddenly appeared before her and sat down in his chair, legs spread and elbows leaning forward onto knees, fingers steepled beneath his chin and his brown deeply furrowed. He took a deep breath, as though readying himself for something, before he spoke.

"What do I need to do?"

The question was unexpected. In this certain context, indeed in most any context, that question had never been uttered by him.

"What do I need to do to make this right?" His brow knitted together as he looked imploringly at her. He was genuinely lost, she realised, with a strangely unpleasant feeling. He was really and truly lost.

"Please, Joan, tell me what I have to do to make this right"

What was she supposed to say to that? How the hell was she supposed to respond? Why was this up to her? He was the one that had jumped off the fucking building. He was the one who had made her think that he had been dead for the past two years. This was on him. This was his fault. Why was it up to her to make this right?

"Jesus _fucking_ Christ Sherlock" she knew that once she started on this path, there was no going back. But, right at this moment, Joan Watson did not give two shits. "How the _fuck_ can you say that?" Sherlock frowned in confusion, leaning back a little as he processed this.

"I'm trying to…"

"Two years. Two… years… And I thought…" Joan's head shook from side to side as she tried to process the words that would not form in her brain. "You let me grieve. You let me _grieve_..." It was all coming back now. All the pain, the hurt, the agony, the terror, the panic, the loneliness, the blame, all of it. And he just sat there, confused. He didn't understand. And in that moment, in that horribly real and deadly moment, Joan realised that he never would. That he never could.

"How could you do that?"

"Joan…" he reached out, as though trying to calm her or shut her up long enough to inject his response.

"Don't" Joan sat back from him, an ugly grimace on her face, one she applied every time she suppressed the uncontrollable sensation of shattering that occurred in her heart. "Don't touch me Sherlock or I swear I will _break_ you" Cursed were those who felt too much, she thought as an all too familiar ache tugged at her eyes. And yet, cursed were those that felt not enough. Would Sherlock ever see that? No.

The look of blank shock on his face was the last straw. The glassy emptiness that invaded his eyes, the confused twitch of his eyebrows as he suppressed the emotions that Joan found herself unable to. He was feeling and he didn't know why or how or what it was. And he never would. Joan was not here to help him decipher his emotions this time. She was the cause of them. He didn't understand that. He thought he had explained to her why he had done it. He thought she had understood, despite her withdrawal. He had assumed for the first few days that it was a part of her acceptance process. How wrong he had been. What had he done wrong now? There was not enough comparative data to draw upon for this circumstance. No previous experience to draw upon.

"Come now Joan…" he tried to adopt a reasonably humorous tone to his voice, lightening his expression despite the fact that it felt so horribly misplaced on his face. "Don't tell me you haven't missed this… the thrill of the chase, the blood pumping through your veins, just the two of us against the rest of the worl…" She threw her tea at him. For a moment, Sherlock was struck dumb. He froze, quite literally, the skin on his face burning and dripping with boiling hot tea. Joan didn't look angry. She didn't look sad or shocked or any of her usually blatant emotions. She looked dead. She looked as though the world had crumbled down around her and stripped her bare of that which she once so passionately and wonderfully felt. She looked broken. But for the single tear that slipped unheeded from her eye, Joan Watson might just as well have been a plastic moulding of a human. Empty. Nothing. A strange strangling, squeezing feeling settled over Sherlock's heart. He was momentarily short of breath, and a strange ache pervaded the muscles of his upper lip. He didn't understand. What had he done?

Joan said nothing. She didn't have anything to say. What was she supposed to say to the man she loved so fiercely and deeply, but whom she could not look at without feeling dead and empty? There was nothing. Nothing to say at all.

She dropped her cup as she stood up, but ignored the shattering as it made contact with the ground below. Sherlock flinched, but otherwise did not move. Only his eyes followed her as she made her way to the door and blindly grabbed a coat from the hook before tearing down the steps and out of 221b. He remained unmoving as she pulled the coat over her shoulders on the pavement beneath the window and began to walk away, as fast as her legs would allow. She could not stand to be near him a moment longer for fear that she would explode. She couldn't bear any of this _bullshit._

It was only ten minutes later that she realised the cloak around her shoulders was Sherlock's, and that the scent of him was stamping on the pieces of her shattering heart.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

* * *

><p>His face had adopted a reddish hue since having the tea thrown at it. He dabbed a cold towel at it, hoping it would stop the burning. It didn't.<p>

Sherlock was confused. No, Sherlock was horribly and awfully lost. The most vile and pathetic state that exists to man. But, strangely, his ignorance did not disgust him. Not this time. This time it brought with it a whole set of emotions that he did not know how to process or even begin to comprehend.

He had thought that his return would restore Joan to the woman that she had been before the fall. He had thought she would have been happy to see him, that the absence of his last two years would cease to matter when faced by weight of relief that came about by his return. He thought that she would be happy. But Joan… she had been… so… so…_ empty_. Her body was so thin, everything about her was so thin, she had lost more than half of her body weight, he suspected. That had… scared him. She'd changed more than physically, though. His mind had catalogued the expressions that she displayed during their brief and few exchanges, expecting them to be colourful and easy to identify. But his mind had not been able to understand any of them, especially that last look that she had given him. Her face had gone slack, her eyes had become dim, glassy with unexpected moisture, her posture had become bent, defeated. He could not remember ever having seen her look like this before. This was not the Joan he had known two years ago. That Joan had been full of energy, full of life. She had been so purposeful, so strong and defiant in her nature. He had seen her take on men double her size, and hospitalise them. He had seen her small and idiotic mind in its most brilliant states, and he had been greatly taken aback by the admirable genius that she could occasionally spit out. He had seen her… love (Sherlock wasn't comfortable with diagnosing that specific term, he had, after all, felt it only once, towards a four legged animal, and wasn't typically aware of its physical state). She had been the calm authority in his life that he had never had, in such a way that he had recognised his own change in behaviour, but in such a way that he had been… fond of her for it. Fond? The word seemed so blank in the face of what it was supposed to represent. But Sherlock didn't want to say the other word for it. Even in the privacy of his own mind, the intimate and irreversible nature of that word seemed too much. Even for Joan…

No.

Sherlock wanted to scream. An urge he had felt very few times in his scientific and emotionless life. What had brought about this urge? He searched his face in the mirror. What was this expression? His brow was furrowed and his eyes were wide and glassy, his shoulders were tense but his posture was weak. He didn't understand. He didn't understand. He had nothing, absolutely nothing to compare to this. A lifetime of emotions, and nothing could come close to this feeling. Well… perhaps once… but how could the death of his beloved Redbeard come even close to comparing to the absence of Joan? His dog had died. Joan had left… she had only left the apartment… after pulling that face. That dead face… Was it the same? How could it be?

He needed to retreat into his mind palace. There was not enough data in the forefront of his mind to draw upon. Maybe in his palace there would be more. He withdrew into a shell of exterior obliviousness, and felt the presence of his palace around him.

He was standing in a white, empty space. It was a calming place. There was nothing here to distract him for his purpose, unless he willed its presence.

He would start with identifying what was wrong with Joan.

But… that made it sound like she had contracted some disease. She hadn't, had she? Sadness could not be contracted like a disease… But what she had displayed was not sadness. Immediately a hundred images of Joan were floating before him in the white space. Every different emotion she had displayed in the two years that they had known each other. His hands flew about the pictures, throwing the incorrect ones into the empty white space to disappear. Happiness, confusion, surprise, delight, anger, hatred, violence, disgust, passiveness, tiredness, hunger, boredom, exasperation… none of them fit. Sherlock had thrown all but one of the images away before he realised. He remembered this one. He remembered it very well. How could he forget? How could he possibly forget meeting his blogger?

The image that he had conjured to mind was that of the lab at Bart's, where he had been conducting an experiment before Mike and a woman had entered.

Time to revisit it.

He closed his eyes and when he opened them he was standing in the room, looking at himself and at Joan as she said the words "Bit different from my day". He stared at her. The first time they had met he had been identifying and cataloguing physical data that led to a basic understanding of her life. This time, he was identifying and cataloguing physical data that led to a basic understanding of her emotional mind.

This was not his Joan (the possessiveness of that statement slightly repelled him, but he continued on his mental tangent). Everything from her posture to her expression to the casual way that she spoke was just wrong. In that moment, he realised how much that this woman had changed since they had met. He realised just how much they both had. Curious.

As she had handed her his phone, he froze the scene. He stepped closer to her, removing his other self from the picture to stand before her. She looked wrong. This was not Joan, this was a hollow human being who he did not know… and yet who was familiar. How was she familiar?

Oh.

_Oh. _

Realisation hit him with the force of a punch, and the scene around him disappeared as he turned on the spot, his eyes opening as he refocused on reality. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have been so blind? It was obvious now, wasn't it? So painfully obvious. He was getting slow. Now that would never do.

He had to find her, to tell her that he understood now. He did understand. Didn't he? The excitement within him faded as he came to the realisation that he did. Of course he did. He may not have felt it as strongly as Joan had, but the feeling of depression was one that was not foreign to him. He had suffered from a manic depressive disorder for the greater majority of his life. He had never told Joan that, but as she was a doctor he was sure she must have noticed the trends in his behaviour. Maybe she owed that to the drugs she kept on finding hidden in stashes around the apartment, but then surely she would know that the drugs were for his lows. She wasn't on his level of genius, but it wouldn't take his equal to notice, would it?

He had never much thought about her emotional states in her life before they had met. He had often thought about the occurrences in her past, but her emotional state had never much mattered. Until now. He needed to talk to her. He needed to hear her identify the emotions that he was beginning to comprehend within her.

Sherlock left the bathroom and hurriedly grabbed her phone from the computer table. His was in his coat pocket, so she would receive the message. He opened up Joan's message bank and immediately began to type. He needed her to come back. He needed to tell her that he was so very close to understanding. That all she needed to do was tell him, and everything would become clear. That was what she wanted, wasn't it? For him to understand? That was what she had meant by everything? Throwing the tea at his face… saying the words that she had said. She wanted him to understand. That must be it. What else could it be?

He sent the message.

Joan wouldn't cry. She _would not_ cry. It was only Sherlock… Oh but that was the root of the fucking problem, wasn't it? It was _only_ Sherlock. Why had she ever expecting him to be able to understand? He may not be quite the sociopath that he wanted to be, but he was not entirely human either.

She had kept wearing his jacket for the sake of necessity, it was bloody cold outside, but she had bought herself the strongest coffee that she could find with the change he kept in his pocket, and kept it stuck under her nose so that she could not smell him. Going back to the apartment was, of course, not an option. She was patching together the heart she wish she didn't have. His scent or presence was not what she needed for that specific task.

She walked aimlessly. She didn't know what she was doing, or what she wanted to do. She was distracted by the heavy weight that seemed to bear down upon her shoulders. Her stomach was knotting and churning, her mind was drowning, her lungs were gasping. It was very difficult to breathe.

She needed time. Time to… figure… sort out the endless list of the things that were killing her slowly. Sherlock was right at the top. Her intention was to start at the bottom. Fuck him. _Fuck_ him. He was a poison. A toxin in her blood that her body was… craving. He was a leech. A parasite. A drug. A chemical reactant waiting to mix with her and explode.

She coughed, hoping it would lessen the pressure in her chest. It didn't.

_Ping. _

A phone went off in the pocket of Sherlock's coat. She was tempted to ignore it, show him the cold shoulder he had showed her for two years. Despite his no doubt valid reasons, that two year silence was unforgivable. How could he have done that to her? Didn't he… hadn't he… why couldn't he just… love her like she loved him? There. She had said it, mentally of course. She loved him. She had loved him for a long time. Not in a romantic way, she didn't know if she was quite capable of that, but she loved him like she had never loved another person before. He was her best friend. He had saved her life, perhaps not as blatantly as she had saved his, but all the same. Then he had jumped off of a roof, pretended to be dead for two years, let her life crumble down to a small shallow pile of dust, and waltzed back in expecting everything to just be alright. Expecting it to be fixable. Was that what all of this was? Bitterness at not having her feelings reciprocated? That was absolutely pathetic. And it wasn't what was wrong. Not by a long shot. She had long ago come to terms with Sherlock's emotional capabilities. That wasn't the problem. She didn't quite know what was wrong, but she knew that something was. What was wrong with her? What was wrong with him? Nothing was right with the world. Nothing at all.

A strong urge spawned within her to look at the message. She desperately wanted to ignore it, but her fingers moved of their own will.

_Come home. I need to say something. Please, Joan. SH._

Short, abrupt, lacking of emotion, telling nothing of its originators intent. How very like Sherlock. She wasn't ready to go back. She needed time. Time to do what only the god's knew.

She knew exactly where she needed to go.

She walked to the place, though it was far and she was working up a sweat by the end of it. She didn't want to speak. Even the short exchange with a cabbie was unbearable. She came up here a lot since… it had happened. At first it had been to cry. To sob endlessly for hours until the fresh scabs that covered her heart had hardened into scars, and she was able to make it home without collapsing. No one heard her up here. No one knew she was up here. She suspected if they did, they would not have let her come, for fear she would follow Sherlock's path to the grave. She had been tempted. By god she had been tempted. More than once all she had wanted in all the world was to throw herself off the edge of Bart's hospital roof, down below to be dashed against the pavement that he had '_died'_ upon. Her basic human urge of self-preservation had been destroyed. Not for the first time, and probably not the last, all she had wanted to do was die. She had stood up on the edge, hands in her pockets, staring into the endless sky above her, willing her balance to fail her and cause her to fall. It never did.

Today she sat on the edge. Her legs dangled over the edge into the nothingness that lay below. She did not have the urge to jump today. She supposed that was something.

For a curious moment she wondered what Sherlock would do if she did in fact jump. Would he cry by her graveside like she had done for him? Would he sit on the edge of the roof and have the urge to jump that she had battled for months before a lethargic depression settled over him and rendered him unable to leave the house let alone get out of bed? Would he waste away, like she had? Would he stare down the barrel of his gun if he was not able to stare off the edge of a roof? Would he scare all of his _friends _into monitoring him constantly? Would he terrify Lestrade to the point of tears by nearly overdosing on the drugs that he kept stashed behind the pipes underneath the kitchen sink? Would he make Mrs Hudson cry by lying in bed and doing nothing but stare out into space for days on end? Would he wish himself dead? Would he die?

Joan did not know. She had always liked to think that she knew Sherlock so very well, but after he had jumped… he was a stranger to her now. That made her chest tighten, her head spin, her stomach churn. All of a sudden it became a little harder not to cry. He would grieve, she supposed, in his little Sherlock way. Maybe he would drown out the memory of her with alcohol and drugs while simultaneously picking up every case thrown at him. Even the boring ones, god forbid. He might do anything. But he wouldn't die inside for her like she had died inside for him. He wasn't capable of it.

_Ping. Ping, ping, ping. Ping. _

He was panicking now. Probably for his own sake. He had no idea where she was, she was confident of that. Why would he ever suspect Joan of brooding in the place he had died? Or not died, as the situation stood.

It was much easier not to feel when she was one shift of balance away from death. It was always easier to think that way.

_Joan come home._

_Where are you?_

_Don't ignore me, I'm trying to understand._

_I think I understand._

_Joan come home._

_Don't ignore me._

_Please._

_I'm sorry._

_Please._

She turned his phone off after the last one. A sob racked through her chest, and before she could stop herself she had begun to cry. She had failed that promise then, she thought, as a flood of tears made their effortless track down her cheeks. She hiccupped grossly as an unbearable pressure crushed her chest. It was the same panicked sobbing she had endured for months after his supposed demise. Once she started, it was impossible to stop.

"Joan?" Joan jumped violently as she heard a voice behind her, grabbing the roof tightly as her balance shifted precariously. Joan turned and saw Molly Hooper standing wide eyed behind her.

"He texted me… Said one of his network saw you sitting on the edge… Sorry…" Of course. His network. Now that he was back and large as bloody life they were no doubt constantly reporting to him again. He had probably put them all up to hunting for her. Anything for a scrap of coin. How could she have forgotten about those homeless blighters? Fuck. Now her only place of solace was ruined.

Molly continued, awkwardly, when she didn't respond: "I thought… well… he told me to come up here and make sure you didn't jump before he got here… No, I mean, make sure you didn't jump at all…" Molly was wringing her hands nervously, her eyes wide with fear. Obviously she was terrified that Joan would jump.

The two women had not become close, nor indeed spoken at all, since Sherlock had jumped. She thought that it was because they both needed to mourn in their separate ways, but now Joan was beginning to suspect something else. Why else would Molly so effortlessly speak about him? Why else would he contact her of anyone?

"You knew" it was not an accusation, nor a question. "You knew he was alive"

Impossibly, Molly's eyes widened further, and she began to splutter about hopelessly as she tried to reassure Joan that she had wanted to tell her, that he had made her promise, that she was sorry. Joan didn't care. She wasn't listening.

She wondered how many others had known. Mycroft, undoubtedly. Probably a hundred homeless people. Why had she not bothered to ask that question? Of course it hurt so much more, but she felt like she had a right to know that she was one of the last to be made aware of his survival. That _bastard._

Molly looked close to tears. She was terrified that Joan's realisation would make her jump. It was not her fault. Joan had no right to put her through this. Even if she had, unwittingly, done the same to her.

"Stop, Molly, this is not on you" Joan swung herself over and back onto the building. She walked over to Molly and put her arms around the woman. She had never hugged her before, and was surprised by how warm and slight she was. It felt quite nice, she realised, to be hugging again. It had been a long time. Molly relaxed a little, enough to speak comprehensibly again.

"He told me to make sure you didn't leave before he got here" Joan pulled away.

"Alright" She patted Molly's shoulder. "It's ok then, you can go if you want, I promise I won't jump" Molly looked uncertain, no doubt he had told her not to leave. The bastard knew how to invoke loyalty out of Molly. He had manipulated her before. Poor woman never seemed to realise.

"Off you go" Joan said, a little more firmly. Molly nodded and walked away.

Now that she was gone, Joan had two options. She could either wait for Sherlock to get here, and continue the confrontation that was breaking her, or she could leave as quickly as she could and avoid him altogether. It would mean she wouldn't go back to 221b for the night, but right now Joan wasn't sure she wanted to go back to 221b at all. She had had two years to come to terms with Sherlock's nonexistence. In that time, she had died piece by piece. She had lost who she was. She was not the Joan that Sherlock had known. She was not the Joan that she had known. She couldn't live without him, yet she couldn't live with him. Maybe she could go back to Harry, and the two of them could drink themselves to an early grave. It seemed pitifully pathetic to be honest, but it was still an option. But Joan didn't want that. Sherlock would think her weak. He didn't have a right too, but the cold man would. Perhaps she would wait, and when he arrived she would make him see what he had done. She supposed that if she did that, his reaction would dictate hers. If he did nothing and responded like the robot that he was, she _could_ push him off the edge and follow him down. He would die for real this time, and so would she. But then she would be forever remembered as the unstable woman who killed the greatest detective that the world has ever known, only a week after the greatest detective that the world has ever known turned out to be actually alive for all this time. But she didn't want to kill him. She didn't even want to hurt him, not really.

If he responded like a human… well, that was more difficult. She was distracted from the indecision that plagued her by the numbness within her that made it hard to breathe again. She found that every time uncertainty filled her, so too did that tell-tale numbness. Grief was a difficult sickness to recover from.

Against her better judgement, Joan would wait. Wait for what though, she was not quite sure.

It took him seven minutes to get there. He must have tipped the driver, she thought, as she watched him quite literally leap out of the cab and sprint towards the hospital. She had quite a nice view of it, from her view standing on the edge. She knew that perhaps it would be cruel of her to stand in the place that he had when he had jumped two years ago. But, it was an experiment… of sorts. If he could do it, so could she.

She heard the smash of the door as he flung it open.

"Joan!" His baritone voice sliced through the air, filled with fear. She heard his footsteps falter as he slowed and came to a stop somewhere behind her. She did not turn around to look at him.

"Joan… come down… please…"

"You didn't"

"What?"

"I begged and begged you… I told you to come down… I begged you for one more miracle. I begged you not to be dead…" Emotion crumpled her voice, and tears began to leak out of her eyes once more. God he must think her pathetic.

"I know" he told her, his voice more quiet now "I heard you"

"Then… why didn't you tell me? Why would you tell so many people, but not me? I thought that… I thought we were…"

"I didn't tell you because everything depended upon your ignorance. I'm… sorry, but if they did not believe that I had truly died, it would all have been for nothing… they would… they would have killed you..."

Silence filled the space between them, heavy and burdened with years of unspoken regrets.

"I died, you know" she told him then, breaking the quiet with a voice she forced to remain strong. "Inside. I died every day. There was nothing left of me in the end. There still isn't. I'm not the woman I was before Sherlock"

"I know" he sounded closer now, yet quieter all the same "I'm not the man I was before either". She could feel him behind her, feel his unspoken urge to pull her back from the edge.

"Look at the two of us" she laughed of a sudden, tipping her head back but maintaining a hold on her shaky balance "Places reversed! Only, this time there isn't a plot to save me if I fall. If I fall, I'm afraid I'll be very, _very_ dead"

"Joan…"

"What would you do if I died, Sherlock? You know what I would do, I spent the last two years doing it… and very obviously something broke a little bit up here" she tapped her head forcefully with her finger, making him wince as she swayed a bit. "But what would the legendary Sherlock Holmes do for_ me_?"

There was silence as she waited for him to respond.

"I don't know" his voice was unusually timid.

"Well that's not bloody well good enough" Joan replied with a miserable snap. A strong gust of wind picked up then, and Joan was buffeted in its path. She wobbled precariously before regaining her balance, but not before she heard Sherlock's shout of terror.

"I don't know! Joan come down!"

"Come on! You spent the last two years pretending to be dead. Even if you knew I was still _alive_, surely you still felt _something_"

"Of course, Joan, of course I felt something"

"Really?"

"Yes!"

"What?"

"Oh for hell's sake Joan…"

Another gust of wind picked up, but this time Joan didn't quiet manage to maintain her balance. She flailed her arms as she felt herself beginning to tip, and a feeling of intense fear seized her heart. She spun towards Sherlock, desperate for something to hold onto to regain her balance. In the moment during which she thought she would plummet to her death, Joan realised how much she really and truly didn't want to die. She wanted to stay with him, be with this ridiculous excuse for a man, and spend the rest of her ridiculous life loving and hating him. In that moment, she realised that no matter what waited in store, she would forgive him. She was always going to forgive him.

She felt a strong hand seize the front of Sherlock's coat, and suddenly her world was pitching forward and back onto the rooftop. With a strangled yelp she tumbled forward and onto Sherlock, who was sent crashing to the ground beneath her unexpected weight. He let out a strange oomph as they collided with the concrete rooftop, Sherlock clutching Joan's front tightly, and Joan lying flat on top of Sherlock.

For a moment, neither of them moved. Joan stared down into the wide eyes of Sherlock, and he stared back up into the wet eyes of Joan. Joan realised suddenly that it was the most contact that they had had in two years.

Suddenly it was too much. All of it, every part of it, was too much. Her heart swelled to the point of bursting and the urge to clutch onto him tightly overwhelmed her, so much so that Joan found herself sobbing into his chest, her arms circled around his and her hands clutching his shoulders. Sherlock stayed stock still, afraid that any sudden movement would end the moment. He was aware that with her closeness, she would be able to feel the thumping of his heart in his chest, the vestiges of panic that clung to his stiffened muscles. Yet, with her closeness, those things didn't matter. He could feel her pressed against him, feel her familiar and comforting warmth, he could smell her- the familiar scent of the cheap shampoo in her hair, and the warm scent of her soft skin. He could feel the tickle of her hair against the bottom of his chin, the shaking of her slight body as uncontrollable sobs racked through it. And, for the first time in his life, Sherlock allowed himself to sink into the embrace of another, and let the warmth of shared emotion wash over him. He felt his arms circle her, clutching her tightly to him. He closed his eyes.


End file.
